PATs moved to 15 yard line

Dejo

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Patriots have to start from their own 15 yard line? Now that is punishment.
 

Toast88

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They could've achieved their objective by simply moving it to the 1 yard line or the half yard line.

Would've been far more interesting. Now you've all but eliminated fakes
 

Toast88

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I see no problem with drastically changing a wildly popular product like football.

I mean, hell, let's lengthen and widen the field. That'd be a hell of a thing. Also, make the ball round instead of that oblong shit.

Also, no more using your hands. Let's make this shit reeaallyy interesting.
 

Aztazzoni

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I think the change is stupid... Takes the element of surprise out of the play.. Should have just had the ball placed on the hash marks to the side of the play... I like the add of the def can score now because they might actually try and block it...
 

PeterMbangala

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Funny article from English newspaper on this...

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/bl...-point-lets-get-rid-of-nfl-kickers-altogether

The NFL owners met in San Francisco this week for their annual spring meetings and, in between hug sessions, voted to change the distance for extra-point attempts.

Three proposals were heard by the owners, with the idea to move the extra point back from the two-yard line to the 15-yard line – the modification favored by the league’s competition committee – being the change voted into NFL law by the owners, 30-2. But why are we settling on a small tweak to the extra-point? Let’s get rid of the kicking game entirely. Full stop. In the words of the great American philosopher Mike Ehrmantraut: “No more half measures.”

The approximately 128 people worldwide who watch the NFL for the kicking game are likely outraged at this idea. (The 128 figure is reached by multiplying the 32 NFL kickers by four to account for their parents and each kicker’s wife or girlfriend.) Everyone else is likely fine with the half-measure. But NFL football would be a significantly better and safer product without kickers. Hear me out, Mrs Vinatieri.

A good way to decide whether a sports rule makes sense is to think about whether it would be put in place if the sport was invented now. So we’re all in a room inventing American football in 2015, right? We’ve decided our new sport will feature giant men with other-worldly speed and strength running and colliding all over the field. We’ve decided the ball can be advanced down the field by running or throwing. And we’ve decided that six points will be awarded when a team advances the ball past a goalline at the end of the field. Hey! Sounds awesome! This could be really popular!

Then some guy pipes up with: “Hey, and what if every so often we have a tiny guy who couldn’t play any other position on the team run onto the field and kick the ball through some metal sticks for a point or three?” This person would be banished from the room, and the open bar at our sport-inventing soirée would be cut off.

Football, despite its name, puts foot to ball for just a few brief moments each game. The very idea of kicking in the sport is contrived, unnecessary and unnatural to the sport (Ndamukong Suh’s post-whistle activities included). Soccer doesn’t interrupt play after every goal to have a rostered player with no soccer skills run onto the field and try to throw the ball off the crossbar from midfield for an extra fraction of a goal. Basketball free throws aren’t attempted by players kicking the ball at the hoop – although that might be an approach Dwight Howard should try. Yet both would be as natural to their sport as kicking is to American football.

Doing away with the kicking game gives football fans more of what we want: actual football. After touchdowns, teams can have the option of going for a one-point conversion from the two-yard line or a two-point conversion from the five. Want to add a three-point conversion? Sure! Let’s do it! Try for three points from the 20. But all of these options are, again, actual football plays involving real football players, not a sudden departure from everything else with single-play specialists.

Just four springs ago, NFL owners voted to move kickoffs from the 30 to the 35-yard line to increase touchbacks and limit injuries sustained during kick returns. Another half-measure. We can remove kickoffs from the game completely and all the injuries that come with them. Here’s how:

• If a team attempts a one-point conversion after a touchdown, the opponent gets the ball on the ensuing possession at the 30-yard line.

• If a team goes for two, the opponent starts its next drive at the 20.

• And if a team tries our new three-point conversion play, their opponent has to begin their possession at the 10.

That all adds layers of strategy to the game for our multimillionaire genius coaches to mull. There is no strategy involved with sending a kicker out to knock in a chip shot and then blast a kickoff as far as he can before being banished to bench again.

If we’re banning kickers, field goals have to go along with extra points. Not a problem. By doing away with field goals, the ultra-conservative coaches who play not to lose will either have to change their style or see themselves forced out of the league. The only drive options would be scoring a touchdown or punting the ball away. The Packers sure could have used a Mike McCarthy who wasn’t playing for field goals against the Seahawks in the playoffs. And the entire NFL would be more exciting and entertaining if aggressive play-calling was not the exception, but the norm.

The NFL’s plan to move extra points out to the 15 will change almost nothing. Extra points from the two-yard line have been converted above a 99% rate since 2010. Field goals from the 33-yard line, where extra points will now be attempted, have been converted at a 92.8% rate over the same period. That’s not a big difference. It’s another half measure. Another classic example of Roger Goodell’s NFL doing nothing under the appearance of doing something.

Maybe the new kicker-less structure I’ve proposed for the NFL isn’t exactly perfect. Great football minds like Goodell and Dan Snyder and whoever runs the Raiders these days could hash out the exact details. Maybe we lose the “drama” of the last-second field goal try. But at the same time, we gain more late-game Hail Marys and good men like Scott Norwood lose the potential to become pariahs and punchlines. Getting rid of the kicking game would give us more real football played by real football players instead of football routinely interrupted by a kicking skills competition. From high school to college to the pros to fantasy football, the kicker position feels forced and tacked on to the rest of the team.

Why keep it? History? Tradition? The forward pass didn’t even used to exist and now it dominates the sport. Football has featured many of the greatest athletes to ever walk the earth, but the top 31 scorers in the history of the NFL are there because of kicking. That’s absurd. Just because the inventors of the game were foolish enough to include kicking doesn’t mean we are bound to keep it for all eternity.

Would you watch even a second less of football if kicking was no longer part of the game? Of course not. The NFL’s bottom line wouldn’t be impacted any either. Kicker jerseys aren’t currently flying off the shelves. A big game has never been marketed as: “Gostkowski! Vinatieri! Coming up next!”

Kickers need to be kicked out of the game. But don’t mourn their fate. They can always try punting. Or, better yet: soccer. The US team could use the help.
 

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